Energy Management

Energy management is something that all classes have to worry about, to varying degrees. Each class has a way of regaining energy, and some even have ways to boost the energy recovery of others.

Equipment

The first thing to consider is your equipment. You can change your equipment in battle at any time. Weapons (or skills) which give you energy per hit at the cost of regeneration are particularly worth it for warriors as well as most classes, providing they use a weapon that swings fast like a sword or axe. The exception to this is if you are maintaining a few enchantments, in which case it might be safer to not use these type of weapons. This is because if your energy reaches 0, and you suffer any more "energy degeneration damage", your maintained enchantments will stop dropping (and you will not have the energy to reapply them).. There is also no point to lowering your regeneration unless you are hitting something.

Warriors have some basic skills to regain energy which you might find useful depending on your skill setup. However, almost all their energy regaining skills are elite. All the following are stances or shouts, so it is unlikely they will be broken before you can achieve your goal.

Flourish (Strength): elite skill that gives you energy if you have any attack skills on a cooldown. What is an attack skill for the purpose of this skill? Any skill that does damage based on a weapon that doesn’t take adrenaline. If you need help with this, you can organize your skill list to sort skills by type. Since all these skills cost energy to use in the first place, this will not assist your spell casting much unless you are actually using those attack skills because you want to. This is not worth it unless you are a warrior primary.

Warrior’s Endurance (Strength): elite skill that gives you energy each time you hit. However, your energy can not go back past a certain amount. To maximize the benefit of this skill, you need to be using cheap attack skills that cost energy, or cheap and fast casting spells. Another strategy is to maintain spells if you are using this skill. Since this skill will refill your energy faster than you would regain it naturally anyway, you can maintain 2 or 3 enchantments if you use this skill well and don’t need energy for anything else. If you are not a warrior primary, this skill is not worth it for you.

Victory is Mine! (Tactic): elite skill that heals both your life and energy for each nearby enemy who is suffering conditions. Unless you want to switch targets constantly, this is best combined with epidemic or fevered dream (which is elite, so you can’t be the one casting it). You could be using the disease condition, which spreads itself naturally, which would involve a necromancer. The more conditions your foes have, the more you gain. Therefore, this is best used in a two-person combo. One person inflicts conditions and the other spreads them. This will make it easier to stack conditions and use this skill before they run out.

Bonetti’s Defense (Tactic): this skill gives you close to absolute defense from anything that isn’t a spell or signet. Every time they miss, you gain energy. The trade off is that you must be passive while this skill is active because using any skill breaks it. You can regain energy in peace as long as someone is attacking you. This skill is also adrenaline based, so if you have any way to boost your adrenaline gain, you can maintain this at will. A good spell to combo this with is Balthazar’s Spirit, which boosts your adrenaline AND energy if you take damage. Spells will trigger Balthazar’s Spirit as well as any stray hits. If you don’t gain enough adrenaline while the skill is active, you will quickly remedy that problem with Balthazar’s Spirit. You can have other people cast enchantments on you or your foe to boost your damage, to make up for the lack of skill used. The major problem with this skill, however, is that it’s useless if they aren’t hitting you, which might be a problem as a primary warrior if you are doing a PVP match, as you are usually the last one to be attacked unless you make yourself a target of opportunity, which is risky business. For other classes, you are more likely to get hit, but your main source of contribution to the fight is out while this is active.

Most of their skills are expensive, so you will definitely want to look at the skills they have at their disposal to regain energy or minimize their cost.

Air Attunement, etc.: the various attunement spells are good for preserving energy, but you need enough energy to cast the spell in the first place. However, if you combo these with glyphs of energy, you can reduce the cost but still get the energy return of your attunement. This can help even more, but these alone won’t allow you to cast for long. You can also stack multiple attunements, like the elite version that affects all elemental damage with an elemental attunement of your choosing to receive most of your energy back after each casting.

Ether Prodigy (Energy Storage): you can’t boost the effect of this elite spell unless you are a primary elementalist, but it might still be interesting for you. You regain the same bonus to energy regeneration, but it doesn’t last as long and it drops your max energy. Remove your energy boosting equipment before the spell ends if you are worried about the damage kickback.

Ether Renewal (Energy Storage): elite and very hard to make it work for you unless you have others casting a ton of enchantments on you if you are not an elementalist. The advantage of this spell is that you don’t need to waste energy reapplying your enchantments (or waiting for them to be available again) and you also get healed. Your max energy also does not go down through exhaustion. However, the recharge time exceeds the fixed duration.

Glyph of Lesser Energy: you can drop the cost of a spell but you are also adding 5 energy to the cost of your spell by using this. Best used on spells that cost 15 energy or more.

Glyph of Energy: same deal as above except this one is elite and can be more interestingly for very costly spells.

Mesmer

Mesmers are very good at generating energy for themselves while causing some sort of damage to the opposition. Stealing energy by using energy is only useful to a warrior, if casting the spell would reduce your energy to 0 or if you are using energy boosting equipment. For other classes, you shouldn’t have any major problems.

Guilt and Shame (Domination): these 2 skills maintain themselves. You won’t get energy to cast other spells with these, but if your hex is successful, you can regain a little bit more energy than you expended at first. The major problem is that these spells run out easily and the target can choose to wait for them to run out, and you won’t get your energy back.

Ethereal Burden (Illusion): similar to Guilt and Shame in that you regain the cost of the spell once it expires. The difference is that this one will always give you back your energy. However, the recast time is pretty long and the effect is short.

Channeling (Inspiration): the inspiration line contains many energy draining spells. This is one of them, but is more in the line of the elementalist’s attunement spells. This will only help you cast longer, and only if you are close to many enemies. You need to cast to activate it.

Drain Enchantment (Inspiration): this spell does a little more than sustain itself (finally). You get the valuable enchantment-removal effect and can regain a significant (for a warrior) amount of energy. It is unlikely you won’t find a target who is enchanted, but if you don’t this spell won’t do you much good.

Energy drain (inspiration): casting elite spell - this will give you a significant amount of energy as well as take that much away from your target.

Energy Tap(Inspiration): same as above except it is not as efficient but also not elite.

Ether Lord (Inspiration): definitely a skill you want to use when you have 5 energy left. This will help you regain your energy through regeneration while denying some to your enemy. Can be critical in your effort to drop the energy of a healer or any other character.

Inspired Enchantment (Inspiration): this spell works particularly well if your other class is enchantment heavy, like a monk. This also removes your foe's enchantment, which is useful. However, the energy gain is small. You need points in the attribute of the spell you steal to boost it’s effect past the minimum.

Inspired Hex (Inspiration): similar to Inspired Enchantment except you cast it on allies instead of enemies. If your other class is necromancer, you should be able to use almost everything you steal efficiently.

Leech Signet (Inspiration): you can steal energy without spending any, which should be pretty appealing to you. You need to find someone casting, but that probably won’t be very hard.

Power Drain (Inspiration): more powerful than Leech Signet, but costs 5 energy.

[3]Mantra of Earth, etc (Inspiration): you regain energy each time you get hit by the element of your choice, as well as take reduced damage, but the cost is expensive. Best way to use this is against enemies who have weapons doing the right type of elemental damage rather than standing in an area of effect spell, although this is also an option. If you have a ranger using Winter or Conflagration, it is easier to control the type of elemental damage you are hit with. If fighting PVP premades, take a look at the type of damage each profession’s wand uses to better influence your choice. Fire is a good choice, as fire spells are high in damage and plentiful. People using fire swords are also easy to spot. If an elementalist is trying to kill you with armour penetrating lightning attacks, the lightning mantra is also a good choice.

Mantra of Recall (Inspiration): with this elite enchantment, if you have a lot of points invested in inspiration, you can regain twice the amount of energy you invested. You can’t control when you will regain your energy, however, so you need to be mindful of the timing. This can be helpful to protect yourself from energy draining since they can’t control your sudden burst of energy.

Spirit of Failure (Inspiration): recommended, especially if you can blind your enemy or stack other spells to make him miss more. By itself the effect isn’t that great. There is not much more to say about this spell, other than it is awesome unless the enemy does not try to attack or does not miss.

Monk Skills

Monks have several ways to boost energy gain but rely on enchantments to do so.

Balthazar’s Spirit (Smithing) : this skill is linked to smiting, but the description doesn’t imply that attribute affects it in any way. This is a good skill to cast on yourself or other warrior hybrids, as it feeds you both adrenaline and energy if you take damage. The problem for warriors, of course, is that you must be taking damage, so it is typically more useful when fighting monsters rather than other players, since warriors don’t usually get attacked until most of your team is dead. Under the right circumstances, though, this is a very good skill.

Essence Bond: similar to Balthazar’s Spirit. There is no adrenaline gain, the damage must be physical, but you can cast it on someone else and you will gain energy, rather than them. This makes it a good choice to cast it on your healers so that you can have a constant flow of energy.

Aura of Faith (elite) and Blessed Aura (Divine Favour): this doesn’t give you more energy but makes your healing related spells more powerful. You can’t boost the effect unless you are a monk primary, but it might be still be worth it for you under the right circumstances.

Blessed Signet (Divine Favour): for this skill to be worth it, you must be a primary monk, and be maintaining many enchantments. Therefore it is a better idea to pick this signet if you are maintaining many enchantments, rather than the other way around. A maintained enchantment is one that lowers your energy regeneration.

Divine Spirit (Divine Favour): lowers the cost of your spells, which is useful, but unfortunately the effect is way too short for it to be useful if Divine Favour is untrained. Even if it is, I think this skill is currently underpowered.

Peace and Harmony (Divine Favour): elite spell that boosts energy regeneration as long as you don’t do anything to the enemy. Unless you are running a pure healer, you won’t be able to benefit from this.

Succor: this spell boosts an ally’s energy regeneration, but the caster of the enchantment loses energy if that person casts. If someone else casts this on you, you can bite the bullet and cast anyway (and hopefully not annoy the other person) or you can limit your energy use to attack skills that consume energy.

Necromancer Skills

Necromancers deal with life more than energy, but there are some skills you can use to boost your supply.

Awaken the Blood (Blood): doesn’t boost your energy supply but makes your spells more powerful, so you will hopefully have to cast less. Best used if you are not using any skills that sacrifice life.

Blood Ritual and Blood is Power (elite) (Blood): these can’t be used on yourself, but you can use it on an ally. These skills sacrifice life so try not to use them with Awaken the Blood.

Offering of Blood (Blood): this elite spell drains your life and gives you energy. Useful as long as you don’t use it while under attack. Avoid using with Awaken the Blood.

Well of Power (Blood): elite spell that exploits a corpse to create an area effect heal and energy regeneration effect. This is useful as long as you stay within the radius of the well. You can use a wand or bow you are carrying to attack if the enemy does not walk within the well’s effect.

Consume Corpse (Death): uses more energy than gained.

Ranger

[4]Rangers are not spell casters, but all their skills use energy. The primary attribute of rangers lowers the cost of most of their skills, so it is a good supplement to energy management.

Energizing Wind (Beast Mastery): this creates a creature that lowers the cost of everyone’s skill within range but makes those skills recharge slower. The minimum amount the skills can cost is 10, which is still pretty high. This is best used to support your teammates and you must make sure it will benefit them more than hinder them. That is, they must be using high cost skills with low recharge time.

Ferocious Strike (Beast Mastery): This skill requires a pet. If your pet hits with this skill, you (not your pet) gain energy as well as adrenaline. This is a good skill if you like pets.

Marksman’s Wager (Expertise) This elite skill requires a bow and you can’t improve it unless you are a ranger. This is a popular form of energy management for rangers. Make sure you cripple your target so that you will not miss.

Practiced Stance (Expertise): this elite skill is useful if you are using preparations, which are mostly bow skills. Therefore it is not of much use to non-rangers. This will make your preparations more efficient.

Storm Chaser (Wilderness Survival): every time you take elemental damage you gain energy and you are also faster. This can be very useful to move around in enemy territory, as casters use weapons that do elemental damage on top of their spells.

Conclusion

This concludes this guide to energy management skills. The key to supplementing your casting with energy management skills is to use the right skill at the right time. Ether Lord is very bad if you use it when your energy is full, and energy gains that take you above your maximum energy are wasted. If you gain energy faster than you can use it, consider bringing some more expensive skills along. However, it is more important to be comfortable and to use the right skills than to be efficient.